Mum's the Word (3 page)

His father is as humble as the ruler of an oil well kingdom. Poppa considers himself a fruit and veggie magnate.

“And think how proud your mother will be,” I enthused. Confidentially, Magdalene is opposed to any organization not run on strict Roman Catholic lines. And surely it was too much to hope that all Mangé members were of the faith.

“Ellie, I wonder what made the Mangés pull my name out of the hat? Abigail's is doing well but not on an international scale, and
The Edwardian Lady's Cookery Book
has yet to make me a household name.”

“You're far too modest.” I was background music.

Ben leaned forward to touch my hair. Missing by inches he paced on. That dratted board still squeaked with every fourth step.

“My entire life hanging in the balance and I did not know it. Do you think the society may have sent one of its members to dine at Abigail's undercover?”

“A point to ponder.”

Gripping the letter with both hands he strove to unravel its secret code. “Sweetheart, I told you about the suspicious-looking chap with the ginger wig and the eye patch.”

“I remember being quite frightened.”

“Oh, my God, Ellie, wasn't that the Thursday when Freddy let the salads reach room temperature?”

Freddy, for the record, is my cousin. Supposedly he is Ben's right hand man at Abigail's. We felt we owed him something because on the whole he was pretty decent about our inheriting Merlin's Court. He may have thrown things in private, but he never tried to throw Ben or me out a window.

“Why couldn't the Mangés have sent their spies on a Tuesday? Nothing, if I do say it myself, compares with my escallop of escargot—the sauce gentle, almost shy …”

Once, believe it or not, I had found the way Ben talked about food one of his most sensuous qualities. Now I resorted
to an antacid tablet. He smoothed out the letter, kissed it, and returned it to his pocket.

“Darling,” I said, remembering it would soon be time for me to take my nap and I hadn't yet got up, “where will your meeting with the Mangés take place?”

He tightened his dressing gown belt, eyes fixed on my face. “Ellie, the society's headquarters are in the States. Where else would we meet?”

“I …”

“Ellie, it's not the
moon
. Jonas and Dorcas thoroughly enjoyed their stay in Chicago.”

“So they did.” I sank back against my pillow. The thought of his being gone from home was a bit of a shock. A sigh escaped me. How desperately I would miss him. What wife of less than a year would not repine? But surely he wouldn't be gone more than a week or a fortnight at most? Unbidden came a rush of euphoria. Scant weeks ago my definition of bliss was being in bed with Ben. Now I must strive not to betray—by sparkling eyes—that I might adjust to being alone. Especially at night.

What ecstasy not to have the bed plunge and plummet every time my beloved turned over in sleep or roused up on an elbow to inquire how I was faring. Oh, that I might in the early hours of morning crawl into the bathroom and drape myself over the blessed chill of porcelain without that dear male voice explaining through a crack in the doorway that we were moving hour by hour ever closer to the end of this disagreeable, but stock, manifestation.

Euphoria ebbed. Guilt flowed in. I do guilt awfully well. Wasn't I the woman who only two years ago at the declining age of twenty-seven would have bartered thirty years of life for thirty minutes with a man? Wasn't I the one who had put in an official request for a baby? I had taken up the rosary, given to me by my mother-in-law, ostensibly as a souvenir from Rome, and I had prayed for the rabbit to die, the test tube to stop fizzing, the word Yes! to appear on the litmus paper.

My fertile hero! After having to be persuaded by all the wiles and negligees in my repertoire that fatherhood was for him, he had committed himself to the parenting project with zeal. From day one he had insisted that we eat right, exercise,
and think Lamaze. He had set aside quality time to be spent with the embryo. My darling knew to the second when we would be talking fetus. He was heavily into such involvement as reading to our child—
now
. Thus ensuring genius level or above. Daddy Dearest believed in singing to the baby. He had no conception of the horror I endured, having my abdomen serenaded, while my insides heaved like a tempest and the bathroom was a thousand-mile trek across burning desert sands. He had no idea because I hadn't told him.

I didn't want to hurt him. I was ashamed of the botch I was making of this joyous experience. Women today are giving birth on their lunch breaks or while standing at the Xerox machine; the race is on to see whether the copies of Mr. Brown's memo or the baby will be delivered first. Every photo of an
enceinte
female shows her garbed in moonbeam white, holding a rose to her parted lips, while waves froth over her polished toenails. What happened to me? Less than three months along and I already felt as though the timekeeper's watch had stopped. I didn't have the energy to look dewy and radiant. Most mornings I didn't have the energy to get up and start counting the minutes until my nap. I lived in constant fear that my mother-in-law would arrive unexpectedly and demand a count of the woolies I had knitted for the layette.

One of these days I would have to drag myself down to Rock-A-Bye Baby in the village, buy a couple of lacy coats, unpick the labels, unravel the necks, and stick knitting pins through them. What I needed, yearned for, was an intermission, only a short one, so I could gird myself to continue with the next six months. That being an impossibility, I would settle for Ben's going to America. I would sleep until his return. Dorcas would fend off cobwebs with an occasional charge of the mop. Jonas could be guaranteed to be rude to unwelcome visitors.

“Are you asleep?” Ben loomed over me.

“Just doing my eyelid exercises, darling! Close, push up and hold; close …” Dorcas stressed the importance of prenatal Physical Education.

“Ellie, we'd better see about booking our tickets. Not much time if we are to leave in a month.”

“Did you say … 
we
?” My eyes were opened. The air stretched tight as a drum.

“Darling, would I go without you?” He reclined with rakish elegance against the mahogany wardrobe. “The society urges that you accompany me. You are banned, of course, from meetings in the Inner Sanctum. But you are part of the package. Spousal support is considered crucial. Think of it, Ellie. If I am admitted to membership, there exists an excellent chance you will be invited to join the auxiliary.”

Oh, cripes! As if I didn't have enough to do feeling rotten.

Inching to the edge of the bed, I sat looking into those marvelous eyes of his, flashing now with opal fire. “Ben, darling! You Odysseus. Me Penelope.”

“Meaning?”

“You go, I stay.”

Tobias yawned his boredom and disappeared back behind the wardrobe.

“Surely you jest!” Eyes dark and brooding, Ben slumped into the fireside chair. “You can't send me off alone. I might do something both of us would regret.”

“Have an extramarital fling?”

“Use foul language—convenience foods, for instance.”

“Darling, I'm sorry. Even at the best of times the words Selection Committee make me want to stick pins in animate objects.” True enough. I was the fat child who never made it into the inner circle of schoolgirl secret societies.

If Ben wanted to be a Mangé, let him. He was his own grown-up person and thus entitled to be childish when he chose. He might need deprogramming when I got him back, but I could think up ways to make that fun.

Lying back down, I said, “My personal prejudices aside, the trip wouldn't be good for the baby. All the books stress stability at this period of a child's life.”

He scraped his chair back with enough force to make ruts in the floor. “Rubbish. I read in an American newspaper only last week that prenatal travel is crucial to the development of inquiring minds.”

I toyed with the idea of luring him down on the bed, twisting my hair into a rope, and wrapping it around his throat. “Ben, what if I should want to eat while over there? Dorcas says the Americans do unspeakable things to baked beans instead of serving them as God and Heinz intended:
straight out of the tin. And they serve jelly—named Jello—on the same plate as meat and gravy. Physically I'm not up to all that.”

“Baked beans and Jello”—he spoon fed me the words—“are on the Mangés' list of outlawed foods.”

The room reeled. Tobias had landed on my stomach. “Ben, I'd be a burden. Whenever you attended one of your meetings and had to leave me alone for hours—maybe days on end—you'd be worried to death about me.”

“I would not.”

“You wouldn't worry”—my voice went all stringy, like chewing gum—“that I, who have the worst sense of direction in living memory, might head out on the wrong bus to Iglooville, Alaska?”

“Ellie!” He thumped a fist against his forehead and the whole room shook. Incredible to think that only fifteen minutes ago this had been a happy marriage.

I stroked Tobias' ears. “Ben, please understand! I've had a grudge against America ever since my parents left me with Uncle Merlin while they went job hunting over there. But if I have to set aside a pet phobia, I would wish to travel light in every sense of the word. As it is, I will only be pregnant enough to look
fat
. And haunted as I am by my fat past, that would be demoralizing.”

What I didn't tell him was that I was gaining weight at a frightening rate. When next visiting Dr. Melrose, I would forego makeup and pop the fillings out of my teeth. Unfair! My food, when I could eat, mostly didn't stay down long enough to do good or harm.

Ben dropped down on the bed, sending the pheasants on the wallpaper into eddying flight. “Sweetheart, treat yourself to some maternity clothes.”

“I'd feel presumptuous at this stage.”

Gripping his head, he fell back on the bed.

I closed in for the kill. “And what about Abigail's? Agreed, Freddy is improving. He no longer tells customers that the desserts are chock-full of cholesterol. But can he be left with no one to restrain him? I know how his beady mind works. He'll introduce a Leftovers Special before you can say jet lag.”

Ben sat up. “I believe my reputation can withstand
Freddy. And he has earned the right to fail or succeed under his own steam.”

Sometimes the man was diabolical. Appealing to my sense of fair play like that! He was gaining on me to the point where I was reduced to wondering how the weather would be in the States at this time of the year.

“Whereabouts in America are we talking?”

A smile slithered on and off his face. “Where would you like it to be?”

“Boston.” A fifty-to-one chance that I was in the wrong state. I hoped to see his eyes cloud with disappointment, but he was looking down, fiddling with his dressing gown belt.

“Amazing!” he said.

“You don't mean …?”

“Well, not in the
heart
of Boston.”

I breathed easy again.

“Some miles outside.”

Tobias got off the bed. Smart cat. I was ready to throw something at Ben—if only I'd felt up to it.

“I don't want to go on a plane.” Definitely scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

“You're not afraid of flying.”

“I'm afraid of turbulence and those horrid little paper bags and the horrid waits outside those horrid little toilets.”

Scowling, he kicked the side of the bed. “Ellie, I want to be a Mangé. I know you're feeling frayed around the edges, but remember, Chapter Two of
The Waiting Game
stresses that's a positive. I'm not asking you to go mountaineering.”

Smoothing my hair off my brow, I fought to look fragile. “Ben, we've been married nearly a year now. We don't have to keep proving ourselves. Love doesn't mean driving oneself to the brink of nobility.” I patted his cheek. “Be selfish, my love, and Godspeed.”

“Such is your final answer?” Rising, he spoke in the voice of one who is going down with his ship. “Foolish of me to be surprised.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I'd rather not say:” Putting his best profile forward.

“As you wish, dear.” Already I was planning my days without him. Bed until noon. Could I possibly be eligible for Meals on Wheels?

“Then again, if you insist on dragging it out of me, Mum did once voice concern that you might be something of a … well-intentioned wet blanket.”

“Your mother said what?” About to hurl myself off the bed, I was saved by a surge of dizziness and the reappearance of Ben's slippery grin. Almost taken in by the oldest trick in the world!

Trembling fingers pressed to my eyes, I quavered, “And I suppose your father agreed! How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have ungrateful in-laws, and here I am carrying their grandchild.”

While Ben strove to disentangle his tongue, I reflected that he did not mean to be an insensitive clod. He had simply bought into the hype that everything about pregnancy was nature at its awesome, exhilarating best, exclusive of morning sickness. Oh, to have lived in the good old days when being with child meant keeping to the boudoir. A dish of bonbons at the ready to tempt one's flagging appetite. A novel—with its unsullied heroine—always within reach. And mustn't forget that most indispensable of old world conveniences—the maid, tiptoeing in to stoke the fire. Stop. Quench that fantasy! With my luck I would have been the perennially pregnant maid. I sighed. Life in this day and age might have its pluses. Could it be that gallivanting to America was not as barbarian as it sounded?

A brave smile touched my lips. “Ben, may I have a small respite before letting you have my R.S.V.P.?”

He knelt at the bedside, picked up my trailing hand, and crushed it to his lips.